A 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) found that members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack despite the organisation being on ceasefire. It has been claimed that the IRA members acted without the sanction of the IRA Army Council. The HET report said that the men were targeted because they were Protestants[4][5][6] and that, although it was a response to the night before, it had been planned some time in advance.[6] The weapons were linked to another 110 attacks.[7]

On 10 February 1975, the Provisional IRA and British government entered into a truce and restarted negotiations. The IRA agreed to halt attacks on the British security forces, and the security forces mostly ended its raids and searches.[8] However, there were dissenters on both sides. Some Provisionals wanted no part of the truce, while British commanders resented being told to stop their operations against the IRA just when—they claimed—they had the Provisionals on the run.[8] The security forces boosted their intelligence offensive during the truce and thoroughly infiltrated the IRA.[8]

There was a rise in sectarian killings during the truce, which 'officially' lasted until February 1976. Loyalists, fearing they were about to be forsaken by the British government and forced into a united Ireland,[9] increased their attacks on Irish Catholics/nationalists. Loyalists killed 120 Catholics in 1975, the vast majority civilians.[10] They hoped to force the IRA to retaliate and thus hasten an end to the truce.[10] Under orders not to engage the security forces, some IRA units concentrated on tackling the loyalists. The fall-off of regular operations had caused serious problems of internal discipline and some IRA members, with or without permission from higher up, engaged in tit-for-tat killings.[8]Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) members, and current or former members of the Official IRA, were also involved.[8]

Between the beginning of the truce (10 February 1975) and the Kingsmill massacre, loyalist paramilitaries killed 25 Catholic civilians in County Armagh and just over the border in County Louth.[11][12] In that same period, republican paramilitaries killed 14 Protestant civilians and 16 members of the security forces in County Armagh.[11]

On 1 September, five Protestant civilians were killed by masked gunmen at Tullyvallan Orange Hall near Newtownhamilton. The attack was claimed by a group calling itself the "South Armagh Republican Action Force".[11] This was the first time the name had been used.

On 19 December, loyalists detonated a car bomb at Kay's Tavern in Dundalk, a few miles across the Irish border. No warning was given beforehand and two civilians were killed.[11] Later that day, three Catholic civilians were killed and six were wounded in a gun and grenade attack on Donnelly's Bar in Silverbridge. The "Red Hand Commandos" claimed responsibility for both attacks.[11]Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers investigating the attack said they believed the culprits included an RUC officer and a British soldier from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).[13]

On 31 December, three Protestant civilians were killed in an explosion at Central Bar, Gilford. The "People's Republican Army" claimed responsibility.[11] It is believed this was a cover name used by members of the INLA.[14]

Four days later, on 4 January 1976, the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigadeshot dead six Catholic civilians in two co-ordinated attacks. They killed three members of the Reavey family in Whitecross and three members of the O'Dowd family in Ballydougan, within twenty minutes of each other. The Irish News reported that the killings were in revenge for the bombing in Gilford.[15] RUC officer Billy McCaughey admitted taking part and accused another officer of being involved.[13] His colleague, John Weir, said that two police officers and a British soldier were involved.[13]

The HET report found that while the massacre was in "direct response" to the Reavey and O'Dowd killings, the attack was planned before that: "The murderous attacks on the Reavey and O’Dowd families were simply the catalyst for the premeditated and calculated slaughter of these innocent and defenceless men".[16]

The bullet-riddled minibus which had been transporting the 11 Protestant workers who were gunned down as they lined up beside the vehicle

On 5 January 1976 just after 5.30 pm, a red Ford Transitminibus was carrying sixteen textile workers home from work in Glenanne to Bessbrook. Five were Catholics and eleven were Protestants. Four of the Catholics got out at Whitecross, while the rest continued on the road to Bessbrook.[17] As the bus cleared the rise of a hill, it was stopped by a man in British Army uniform standing on the road and flashing a torch.[18] The workers assumed they were being stopped and searched by the British Army. As the bus stopped, eleven masked gunmen with blackened faces and wearing combat jackets emerged from the hedges. A man "with a pronounced English accent" then began talking.[19] He ordered them to line-up beside the bus and then asked "Who is the Catholic?".[18] The only Catholic was Richard Hughes. His workmates—now fearing that the gunmen were loyalists who had come to kill him—tried to stop him from identifying himself.[19] However, when Hughes stepped forward the gunman told him to "Get down the road and don't look back".[20] The lead gunman then said "Right" and the other armed men immediately opened fire on the workers.[21]

The remaining eleven men were shot at very close range with AR-18 and L1A1 SLRrifles, a 9mmpistol, and an M1 carbine. A total of 136 rounds were fired in less than a minute. The dead and wounded men's bodies fell on top of each other. When the shooting stopped, one of the gunmen walked amongst the dying men and shot each of them in the head as they lay on the ground.[22] Ten of them died at the scene; John Bryans, Robert Chambers, Reginald Chapman, Walter Chapman, Robert Freeburn, Joseph Lemmon, John McConville, James McWhirter, Robert Walker and Kenneth Worton.[23] Alan Black survived despite having eighteen gunshot wounds.[24]

Hughes managed to stop a car and was driven to Bessbrook RUC station, where he raised the alarm. Meanwhile, a man and his wife had come upon the scene of the killings and had begun praying beside the victims. They found Alan Black, who was lying in a ditch and badly wounded. When an ambulance arrived, Black was taken to hospital in Newry, where he was operated on and survived.[25] A police officer said that the road was "an indescribable scene of carnage",[26] whilst Johnston Chapman, the uncle of victims Reginald and Walter Chapman, said that the dead men were "just lying there like dogs, blood everywhere".[27] At least two of the victims were so badly mutilated by gunfire that immediate relatives were prevented from identifying them. One relative stated that the hospital mortuary "was like a butcher's shop with bodies lying on the floor like slabs of meat".[24]

Nine of the dead, the textile workers, were from the village of Bessbrook, while the bus driver, Robert Walker (46), was from nearby Mountnorris.[2] Four of the men were members of the Orange Order.[28]

The next day, a caller claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the South Armagh Republican Action Force. He said that it was retaliation for the Reavey and O’Dowd killings of the night before,[19][29] and that there would be "no further action on our part" if loyalists stopped their attacks. He added that the group had no connection with the IRA.[19]

The IRA at the time denied responsibility for the killings. It stated on 17 January 1976:

The Irish Republican Army has never initiated sectarian killings... [but] if loyalist elements responsible for over 300 sectarian assassinations in the past four years stop such killing now, then the question of retaliation from whatever source does not arise.[30]

However, a 2011 report by the Historical Inquiries Team (HET) found that Provisional IRA members were responsible[6][31] and that the "South Armagh Republican Action Force" was merely a covername. It added: "There is some intelligence that the Provisional IRA unit responsible was not well-disposed towards central co-ordination but there is no excuse in that. These dreadful murders were carried out by the Provisional IRA and none other".[16] Responding to the report, Sinn Féin spokesman Mitchel McLaughlin said that he did "not dispute the sectarian nature of the killings" but continued to believe "the denials by the IRA that they were involved".[32][33]SDLP Assemblyman Dominic Bradley called on Sinn Féin to "publicly accept that the HET’s forensic evidence on the firearms used puts Provisional responsibility beyond question" and cease "deny[ing] that the Provisional IRA was in the business of organising sectarian killings on a large scale".[34]

According to the account of journalist Toby Harnden, the British military intelligence assessment at the time was that the attack was carried out by local IRA members "who were acting outside of the normal IRA command structure".[35] He also quoted an alleged South Armagh IRA member, Volunteer M, who said that "IRA members were ordered by their leaders to carry out the Kingsmill massacre".[36] Furthermore, Harnden reported a contradictory RUC allegation that the attack was planned, and that future Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt was among the IRA members who planned it (at the nearby Road House pub on New Year's Eve) and took part.[37]

It was alleged by Harnden that IRA Chief of StaffSeamus Twomey, on the suggestion of Brian Keenan, ordered that there had to be a disproportionate retaliation against Protestants in order to stop Catholics being killed by loyalists. According to IRA informer Sean O'Callaghan, "Keenan believed that the only way to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants], was to hit back much harder and more savagely than them".[38] However, O'Callaghan reports that Twomey and Keenan did not consult the IRA Army Council before sanctioning the Kingsmill attack. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh claims that he and Twomey only learned of the Kingsmill attack after it had taken place.[39]

Two AR-18 rifles used in the shooting were found by the British Army in 1990 in a wall near Cullyhanna and forensically tested. It was reported that the rifles were linked to 17 killings in the South Armagh area from 1974 to 1990.[40] Further ballistic studies found that guns used in the attack were linked to 37 killings, 22 attempted killings, 19 non-fatal shootings and 11 finds of spent cartridges between 1974 and 1989.[41]

In 2012, a secret Royal Military Police (RMP) document shown to the Sunday World newspaper revealed that the gunman who finished off the dying men could have been arrested five months later. The document says that the man (referred to as 'P') was wounded when British soldiers engaged an IRA unit near the Mountain House Inn on the Newry–Newtownhamilton Road on 25 June 1976. He managed to flee over the border and was treated at Louth County Hospital shortly after. The three other members of the IRA unit were captured within hours. According to the RMP document, two of them named 'P' as the fourth member. Four guns were also captured by security forces after the gunfight, including two that had been used in the Kingsmill massacre. The RMP document reveals that both the British Army and RUC knew that 'P' was being treated at the hospital but "made no attempt to have him arrested and extradited". This has led to suspicions that 'P' – "who has never been prosecuted despite extensive paramilitary involvement" – was a British agent.[22]

Eugene Reavey had "witnessed the immediate aftermath of the [Kingsmill] massacre, which took place near his home. He was driving to Newry and happened upon it. He and his family were on their way to Daisy Hill hospital to collect the bodies of two of his brothers, John (24) and Brian (22)."[43] Eugene Reavey "was also going to visit his younger brother, Anthony, who had been badly injured in the attack. The bodies of the murdered workmen were being brought into the mortuary when he arrived. He went into the room where the shattered families were gathering, and wept with them. Alan Black [sole survivor of the Kingsmill massacre] and Anthony Reavey shared a hospital room. Black lived whilst Reavey later died."[43]

Paisley used parliamentary privilege to name those he believed responsible, including Eugene Reavey, whom he accused of being "a well-known republican" who "set up the Kingsmills massacre". Paisley claimed to be quoting from a "police dossier".[44] Paisley's claims were rejected by the sole survivor of the Kingsmill massacre, Alan Black, and also by Reavey himself.

Susan McKay wrote in the Irish Times that Alan Black, on hearing Paisley's accusations,

...went straight to the Reaveys' house in Whitecross, south Armagh. He told Reavey that he knew he was innocent. The PSNI has stated that it had no reason to suspect Reavey of any crime, let alone of masterminding the atrocity ... The then Northern Ireland deputy first minister, the SDLP's Seamus Mallon, expressed outrage. Reavey went to the chief constable of the RUC, Ronnie Flanagan. Flanagan said he had "absolutely no evidence whatsoever" to connect him with the massacre, and that no police file contained any such allegation.[45]

In January 2007, the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Historical Enquiries Team apologised to the Reavey family for allegations that the three brothers killed in 1976 were IRA members or that Eugene Reavey had been involved in the Kingsmill attack.[46] Despite this, the allegation continued to be promoted by local unionist activist Willie Frazer of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR).[47] In May 2010, the HET released a report which exonerated the three Reavey brothers and their family of any links to paramilitarism. Eugene Reavey says he now wants an apology from Ian Paisley for the comments he made in 1999.[48] Reavey is currently taking a related case to the European Court of Human Rights.[47]

The Kingsmill massacre was the last in the series of sectarian killings in South Armagh during the mid-1970s. According to Willie Frazer of FAIR, this was as a result of deal between the local UVF and IRA groups.[50]

Two days after the massacre, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that the Special Air Service (SAS) was being moved into the South Armagh area. This was the first time that SAS presence in Northern Ireland was officially acknowledged.[51] However, according to historian Richard English, "It seems clear that the SAS had been in the north well before this. According to the Provisionals since 1971; according to a former SAS soldier they had been there even earlier". Units and personnel under SAS control are alleged to have been involved in loyalist attacks.[52] Author Toby Harnden places regiment's B squadron in Belfast as early as 1974.[53]

There were no immediate revenge attacks by loyalist paramilitaries. However, in 2007 it emerged that local UVF members from the "Glenanne gang" had planned to kill at least 30 Catholic school children as retaliation.[54][55] This gang had been involved in the Reavey–O'Dowd killings and it included members of the RUC's Special Patrol Group and the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment.[54][55] Following the Kingsmill shootings, the gang drew-up plans to attack St Lawrence O'Toole Primary School in the South Armagh village of Belleeks.[54][55] The plan was aborted at the last minute on orders of the UVF's Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership), who ruled that it would be "morally unacceptable", would undermine support for the UVF, and could lead to civil war.[54][55] One Glenanne gang member said that the UVF leadership also feared the potential IRA response.[56] The gang member who suggested the attack was a UDR soldier. The leadership allegedly suspected that he was working for British Military Intelligence,[54][55] and that Military Intelligence were seeking to provoke a civil war.[56]

Another UVF gang, the "Shankill Butchers", also planned retaliation for the massacre. This gang, led by Lenny Murphy, operated in Belfast and was notorious for its late-night kidnapping, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians. Within a week of the massacre, Murphy had laid the groundwork for an attack on a lorry that ferried Catholic workmen to Corry's Timber Yard in West Belfast. The plan was to shoot all of those on board. However, Murphy abandoned the plan after the workers changed their route and transport.[57]

Some loyalists claim the Kingsmill massacre is the reason they joined paramilitary groups. One was Billy Wright, who said:

I was 15 when those workmen were pulled out of that bus and shot dead. I was a Protestant and I realised that they had been killed simply because they were Protestants. I left Mountnorris, came back to Portadown and immediately joined the youth wing of the UVF.[58]

He went on to assume command of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade when its leader Robin "the Jackal" Jackson "retired" in the early 1990s; Wright later founded the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in 1996. He was suspected of at least 20 sectarian killings of Catholics in the 1980s and 1990s.[59] Another with similar claims was RUC Special Patrol Group officer Billy McCaughey, who was one of the RUC officers present at the aftermath of the massacre. He told Toby Harnden, "the sides of the road were running red with blood and it was the blood of totally innocent Protestants". Afterwards, McCaughey says that he began passing RUC intelligence to loyalist militants and also to participate in their operations. McCaughey was convicted in 1980 of one sectarian killing, the kidnapping of a Catholic priest, and one failed bombing.[60] However, McCaughey had colluded with loyalists before the Kingsmill attack, and later admitted to taking part in the Reavey killings the day before – he claimed he "was at the house but fired no shots".[61] McCaughey also gave his view on how the massacre affected loyalists:

I think Kingsmills forced people to ask themselves where they were going, especially the Protestant support base, the civilian support base – the people who were not members of the UVF but would let you use a building or a field. Those people, many of them withdrew. It wasn't because of anything the UVF did. It was fear of retaliation.[19]

As noted above, the IRA denied involvement in the attack. Although author Toby Harnden and others have alleged that it was ordered by elements of the IRA leadership (Seamus Twomey and Brian Keenan), other republican leaders were reported to be very unhappy about it. According to the informer Sean O'Callaghan, Gerry Adams said in an Army Council meeting, "there'll never again be another Kingsmill".[63]

Harnden stated that IRA members in South Armagh who talked to him in the late 1990s generally condemned the massacre. One of them, Volunteer M, was quoted as saying that it was "a gut reaction [to the killing of Catholics] and a wrong one. The worst time in my life was in jail after Kingsmill. It was a dishonourable time". Another, Volunteer G, was quoted as saying that he "never agreed with Kingsmill". Republican activist Peter John Caraher said that those ultimately responsible were "the loyalists who shot the Reavey brothers". He added, "It was sad that those people [at Kingsmill] had to die, but I'll tell you something, it stopped any more Catholics being killed".[64] This view was reiterated by a County Tyrone republican and Gaelic Athletic Association veteran who spoke to Ed Moloney. "It's a lesson you learn quickly on the football field... If you're fouled, you hit back", he said.[65]

In February 2012, controversy arose when Willie Frazer of FAIR proposed a "March for Justice" in which the victims' relatives, along with 11 loyalist bands, would follow the route taken by the workmen the night they were killed. This would have meant passing through the mainly nationalist village of Whitecross and past the homes of the Reavey family, where the three brothers had been killed the night before the massacre.[66] Over 200 people voiced their opposition to the march at a meeting with the Parades Commission in Whitecross. Local SDLP and Sinn Féin representatives also opposed it, saying it would raise sectarian tension in the area.[67] The Parades Commission approved the march on condition that there be no marching bands, flags, banners or placards. Pastor Barrie Halliday, a member of FAIR, received a death threat telling him that he would be shot and his church would be burnt if the march went ahead.[68] The organizers postponed the march; a move that was welcomed by local Sinn Féin MPConor Murphy and Ulster UnionistMLADanny Kennedy.[69]

There is a memorial in Beesbrook inscribed 'The Innocent Victims Murdered at Kingsmills'.[70]

A second memorial, near the site of the attack was vandalised on Friday 30 November 2012 while it was undergoing construction. IRA graffiti was scratched into the plaster of the memorial. Danny Kennedy MLA, who has campaigned on behalf of the families, said he was "absolutely appalled by the attack". The Ulster Unionist representative also claimed that there was an attempt to "intimidate" construction workers at the memorial site, prior to the graffiti appearing. [71][72]

In June 2013, Northern Ireland's SDLP Environment Minister Alex Attwood apologised that his Department has sent a letter to the land owner of the memorial site demanding it be removed as it did not have planning permission. Attwood said: "That letter should not have been issued. How the planning system went off and issued a letter is beyond me. I am not happy." MLA William Irwin criticised the Department's action and contrasted it with its inaction over 19 "illegal roadside terrorist memorials", five of which were in the Newry and Armagh constituency, which similarly had no planning permission.[73][74]